‘Ankara is getting what it wants’: how Erdoğan’s balancing act in Syria paid off

Turkey tried to stall the HTS rebels’ offensive but has now become Syria’s ‘gateway to the outside world’

Less than a week after the deposed Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fled to Moscow, Turkish officials raised their flag over the embassy in Damascus. While many of the shutters on the palatial villa remained closed, the red and white crescent flew over the embassy rooftop for the first time in 12 years.

It was a moment preceded days before by the arrival in the Syrian capital of Turkey’s spy chief, Ibrahim Kalin. In this immediate aftermath of the end of the Assad regime, Kalin rode in a black sedan driven by the leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Ahmed al-Sharaa, who wore civilian dress as he chauffeured Kalin through the crowded streets. The spy chief prayed beneath the hallowed archways of the Umayyad mosque, before emerging to stunned crowds gathered to see the first foreign dignitary to visit the new Syrian leadership.